Systems Operations

Systems Operations refers to a team, or possibly even a department within the IT group, which is responsible for the running of the centralised systems and networks.

Systems Operations personnelhave 3 main types duty. Firstly they will run the day to day procedures for each of the main systems. Whilst these operations may well be automated, a systems operator will execute and oversee theoperation. Secondly, they will perform routine housekeeping procedures on the systems, reviewing error logs and responding to any problems which occur day to day. Thirdly, Systems Operations personnelwill run end of day and 'end of period' (e.g. monthly) procedures which will include the creation of backup copies of all the key data files across the systems.

From the above, it will be noted theSystems Operations do not concern themselves with development, testing or the functionality of the various software applications being run. Their task is focussed upon maintaining maximum 'up-time' bykeeping all system and networks running efficiently.

Real-time
A real-time operating system is a multitasking operating system that aims at executing real-time applications. Real-time operatingsystems often use specialized scheduling algorithms so that they can achieve a deterministic nature of behavior. The main objective of real-time operating systems is their quick and predictableresponse to events. They have an event-driven or time-sharing design and often aspects of both. An event-driven system switches between tasks based on their priorities or external events while time-sharingoperating systems switch tasks based on clock interrupts.
Multi-user vs. Single-user
A multi-user operating system allows multiple users to access a computer system concurrently. Time-sharingsystem can be classified as multi-user systems as they enable a multiple user access to a computer through the sharing of time. Single-user operating systems, as opposed to a multi-user operating...